Yesterday someone posted two extraordinary photos of billboard ads for contraception from 1957. This would have just 8 years after the founding of the PRC. From these we get a reminder that the U.S. and China are coming from very different traditions of public display and interaction design. An art or medical historian could probably tell us what influences this kind of advertising reveals.

The images are from the China 1957 Photo Album by pioneering photographer, film-maker, reporter, and writer Robert Carl Cohen. Cohen was sent by NBC to accompany a group of young Americans who defied the U.S. State Department by extending a trip to the Moscow Festival of Youth and Students, and visiting China. It was a highly political move from both sides. From an August 14, 1957 New York Times article:

All the Americans making the trip showed their passports and turned in
their passport numbers to get visas issued by the Chinese Embassy here.
These visas, however, were issued on separate pieces of paper so there
would be no official record that any of the youths had been in China.

The State Department contends that these making the trip are none the less
violating passport regulations against travel to and in China. Christian
A. Herter, Under Secretary of State, in a special message to each of the
travelers yesterday said the United States and China were in a “quasi-state
of war,” and further maintained that the youths would be “willing tools”
of Communist propagandists if they made the trip.

Unfortunately I can only access the first page of comments
(perhaps I need a QQ ID? Will have to see if it’s possible on a Mac) so there’s not much to translate beyond:

These are too…you know.

Yes, ads did used to be like this.

People then were more liberated than we are today!

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◆Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.

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Jason Li is a designer, illustrator and consultant currently based in Hong Kong. Once upon a time, he studied engineering and ran a news site about fan translations of video games.

Tricia Wang observes how technology makes us human. Her ethnographic research follows youth and migrants as they process information and desire, remaking cities and rural areas.

Jin Ge aka Jingle is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and NGO organizer based in Shanghai. Jin does sociological research and produces multi-media content on the subjects of Internet subcultures and grass-root organizations in China. He is currently a senior design researcher at IDEO.

An Xiao Mina is a design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder in the Pearl River Delta. She uses technology to build and empower communities through design and artistic expression.

Graham Webster is a Beijing-based writer and analyst working at the intersection of politics, history, and information technology in China and East Asia. He believes technology and information design can reveal some of what what wonkdom can’t.

Christina Xu is an observer and organizer of communities, both online and off-. She is particularly interested in youth subcultures, cultural translation & syncretism, and user reappropriations of technology.

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.